Well the other day I was at the Home Depot here in TC and I was walking through the light bulb section. I noticed that they were now carrying LED bulbs. But the problem was they were very expensive, $30 - $50 each. So yesterday I was in Menard's and they had LED bulbs too and they were much cheaper, $14. So I purchased two and put them in the hall recessed can lights.
Currently we have compact fluorescent, CFLs, lights in all our recessed cans. But because I am trying to reduce my energy usage before I install solar, I am looking for additional ways to cut that energy usage. Keep in mind I am looking at a PAR 30 flood bulb which is typically used in recessed can lights.
So after installing them in the hall we were very disappointed in how they were not very bright. They don't have the lumen s that the CFLs have. So I went to the Feit's website to try and find out how many lumen s the bulbs that I have purchased were. But they had nothing listed about them. Only that they were for accenting things. Well that made since because of how dim they are. So I noticed that I should be using their Performance LED bulbs.Well here is the problem with using the Performance LED bulb, it uses 13 watts not any change in power usage between a CFLs which is the same wattage. So really there is no savings in changing the bulbs to LED. Until they get the wattage down then I will continue to use CFLs. I follow a company on Twitter and they make LED lamps in Pennsylvania and their bulbs were 14 watts, actually a little larger. I am going to take the bulbs back sense they really are not going to work in my application.
But the positive side to the LEDs was they were instant on. There was no warm-up time like the CFLs. The LED's color wasn't that bad either. It was a typical bright white like some car lights. The bulbs that I have are 3 watts which is good for energy savings and they also had a 30000 hr rating that is a long time. But if you can not see what you are doing where is the savings.
So after my little test over-night I am going to say wait before running right out to buy these LED bulbs. The technology has not caught up yet. If they are the same wattage as CFLs there is no energy savings.
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I think the biggest issue with going from Incandescent or CFL to LED is that LED's are DC. I'd like to see a push for new home builds or rewires to do DC throughout the home for lighting and some sockets (USB power!). Having an inverter in every light socket seems like a waste of energy to me. Take your Solar and keep it DC, instead of swapping back and forth from DC/AC/DC. If my electronic knowledge isn't too rusty, I'd say stepping up/down voltages and current limiting would still be a lot more efficient than inverting at every socket and outlet when you need DC power. Just a thought.
Thanks for what you do.
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